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What, precisely, is the role of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it can be hard to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has turned into a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the years since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that control for himself, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been taken away from Congress as well; now, under the leadership of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the ability to allocate government money has also shifted to the executive, with the White House claiming the ability to cancel congressionally authorized spending and attempting to redirect the money to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any legislation, anyway; almost all bills must currently be packed into spending packages, huge recurring essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government simply ceases operations. That is, large sections of the government do – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. Currently, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch continues humming along.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can appear rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a majority in a body that has largely rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could assist the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the attention of liberals nationwide. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to trends happening in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as California, New York and Washington draw their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which installed maps that will give Republicans an five more positions in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are also emulating California’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The California initiative seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with concern and frustration to the president’s autocratic centralization of authority and look for methods to restrain his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some critics caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory pattern in which red states do even more to draw their maps so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the measure on strictly principled pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the election is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it means, necessarily, that the power of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and convincing that is meant to define a healthy democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first critique, that Prop 50 will provoke conservatives to redraw their respective districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical argument: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be made to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so without those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of revenge to redraw boundaries that secure permanent positions for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second critique, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a sort of melancholic wish for a different nation than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that the majority of Democrats, I think, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted demographics; it is not good for politicians to select their voters, instead of the reverse; it is not good that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have grown essential in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s power and lessen the amount of suffering he is capable to cause is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only once the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have lawmaking, military or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that Congress still holds is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of stagnant government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and California’s additional representatives are take office, they will find themselves a member of a body with the power to investigate Trump, to broadcast their hearings into his actions and to compel members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist